Immediate Crisis Response - Overview

After severe flooding, a family sits waist-deep in flood water, in front of their home. Photo: UNDP Cambodia

UNDP works to help ensure that the humanitarian response to the emergency also contributes to longer-term development objectives and more resilient communities, laying the best possible ground work for development work beyond the immediate emergency; and helping people move from humanitarian dependency to self-sufficiency as soon as possible.UNDP works to help ensure that the humanitarian response to the emergency also contributes to longer-term development objectives and more resilient communities, laying the best possible ground work for development work beyond the immediate emergency; and helping people move from humanitarian dependency to self-sufficiency as soon as possible.

UNDP ensures public services are functioning as early as possible; affected people are given emergency employment, an income, and trained in construction techniques and other skills to start the process of rebuilding infrastructure and removing rubble; and small businesses are given start up grants, financing and other help to keep communities viable and functioning.

UNDP advisors also work with and train local public servants to make sure that the buildings, infrastructure and communities being reconstructed meet a minimal code of disaster resistance, and that where possible, the underlying triggers of a conflict or disaster are addressed.

Projects and Initiatives

With the conflict in Syria well into its sixth year and with little progress on the political front, United Nations Agencies and NGO partners today appealed for US$4.69 billion in new funding to continue vital work over the next two years. The Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) brings together more than 240 partners in a coordinated, region-wide response to assist 9.3 million people in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq - 4.7 million Syrian refugees and over 4.4 million members of the communities hosting them.

The Government of Kuwait contributed US$2 million today to UNDP’s Funding Facility for Immediate Stabilization (FFIS). The objective of the FFIS is to support the Government of Iraq's ability to respond to the needs of people in areas that have been liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Based on priorities identified by the Government of Iraq and local authorities, FFIS helps to quickly repair public infrastructure, provides grants to small businesses, boosts the capacity of local government, promotes civil engagement and community reconciliation, and provides short-term employment through public works schemes.

Climate change and violent extremism will be two of the major threats to the stability of states and societies in the next decades. In many countries in the continent (Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, etc.) climate change has significantly increased instability by over-stretching the already limited capacity of governments to respond. Boko Haram and Al Shabab threats and attacks in West and East Africa, continued fragility in Central African Republic (CAR) and renewed instability in Burundi and South Sudan are among some of the conflicts that contribute to this fragility cycle. It’s estimated that there have been over 4000 terrorist attacks since 2011 in Africa and 24,000 people killed. Some 2.8 million people are displaced in the Lake Chad Basin alone, and 700,000 Somalis are languishing in refugee camps. Violent extremism is currently devastating economies in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and Lake Chad Basin. For these and other fragile contexts, adding climate change as a ‘threat multiplier and shock accelerator’ triggers further frustration, tension and conflict. It is worth exploring how a changing climate and its impacts on the continent are contributing to exacerbating radicalization on the African continent.